1001Philosophers

Friedrich Nietzsche vs Immanuel Kant

Nietzsche treated Kant as one of the most consequential figures of European philosophical decadence — a thinker whose moral seriousness rescued Christianity at the moment when its theological grounding had collapsed. Kant's place in Nietzsche's genealogy is the secularizer who saved the Christian-Platonic morality by rebuilding it from rational grounds.

At a glance

Friedrich NietzscheImmanuel Kant
Dates1844 – 19001724 – 1804
NationalityGermanGerman
EraModernModern
Movements Existentialism, Continental Philosophy German Idealism, Enlightenment
Profile Friedrich Nietzsche → Immanuel Kant →

Where they agree

Both held that the analysis of human cognition and action is the central task of philosophy, both treated freedom as the highest practical concern, and both wrote against the moral skepticism of their century. Nietzsche read Kant carefully, and his vocabulary of autonomy, the moral law, and the will is built from Kantian materials.

Where they disagree

Kant's categorical imperative grounds morality in the rational form of the will: the moral law is universal because what reason requires of one rational agent it requires of all. Nietzsche held that this is the most refined form of the slave morality he wanted to overcome — universal moral law is the resentment of the weak generalized as a metaphysical principle, with the autonomous rational subject standing in for the Christian God whose authority it inherits. Where Kant defends the moral law as the structure of free reason, Nietzsche reads the same structure as a sophisticated repression of the will to power. The dispute frames Nietzsche's mature critique of European morality.

Representative quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

  • “Postcard to Franz Overbeck , Sils-Maria (30 July 1881), tr. Walter Kaufmann , The Portable Nietzsche (1954)”

    I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor , and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza : that I should have turned to him just now , was inspired by "instinct." Not only is his overtendency like mine—namely to make all knowledge the most powerful affect — but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely

  • “Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”

    Letter to Elisabeth Nietzsche, Bonn, 1865-06-11, [ specific citation needed ] quoted as epigraph in Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

  • “Letter to Elisabeth Nietzsche, Bonn, 1865-06-11, [ specific citation needed ] quoted as epigraph in Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (1961)”

    Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.

Immanuel Kant

  • “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

    Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

  • “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”

    Der kategorische Imperativ, der überhaupt nur aussagt, was Verbindlichkeit sei, ist: handle nach einer Maxime, welche zugleich als ein allgemeines Gesetz gelten kann.

  • “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

    Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6. | Variant translations: Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built. | From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned. | Never a straight thing was made from the crooked timber of man.

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